The information on this blog about the corruption in America's courts will disgust and frighten you and propel you into a world of racketeering, greed, larceny, malicious prosecution, and outrageous disdain for due process, the Rule of Law, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Professional Responsibility Standards, Rules and Statutes. This is the Unified Court System of New York State. You will be a victim unless you speak up and protest. by Betsy Combier

Sunday, August 11, 2013

The NYPD Witholds Relevent Information In Criminal Cases

The NYPD’s secrecy weapon

Want information from the police files? They'll see you in court.

LINK

Richard Rosario had almost run out of options before his lawyers turned to the Exoneration Initiative nearly two years ago. He had proclaimed his innocence since New York City police detectives accused him of the 1996 murder ofGeorge Collazo in the Bronx, and he had exhausted most of his appeals.

After 15 years in prison, Rosario had good reason to try once more. Several witnesses could place him in Florida at the time of the homicide, and in 2007 a federal judge agreed that Rosario’s original lawyers had failed him by not calling more of those witnesses to testify at his trial. Rosario’s next obstacle, however, wasn’t a legal technicality or missing witness — it was a public records request to the New York City Police Department.

AP Photo/Adam Nadel

“Every federal court who reviewed the case said, ‘Yes, the witnesses were credible,’” said Rebecca Freedman, assistant director of the Exoneration Initiative, a nonprofit organization that investigates wrongful convictions.

In late 2011, Freedman sent off a public record request to the NYPD for the police reports taken the night of the murder, in search of an eyewitness who could help exonerate Rosario. Then she ran into a big blue wall. The NYPD delayed and delayed her requests, forcing Freedman to file a lawsuit against the police department in April. In June, a judge ordered the NYPD to turn over seven unredacted pages of police reports, three of which detailed an interview with a witness who described the shooters and getaway vehicle in the murder.

“These facts, if established, would appear to contradict the People’s theory at Rosario’s criminal trial, which was that Rosario killed Collazo after a random altercation,” Justice Peter H. Moulton wrote in his decision.

The NYPD has appealed the judgment. As a result, Freedman has yet to see the witness statements that could help with the investigation into Rosario’s innocence. The case highlights an uncomfortable reality: New York State’s freedom of information laws leave little recourse outside of the courtroom when public agencies such as the NYPD refuse to comply with public record requests. And evenas the city rolls out new open-data andcrime mapping initiatives, lawsuits continue to pile up at One Police Plaza accusing the NYPD of making it nearly impossible for information seekers to access public records available under state law.

But a deeper issue at the department remains its questionable commitment to complying with state freedom of information law (FOIL). The department has refused to respond to hundreds of requests from the general public within the timeline spelled out in the law, according to a recentreviewfrom New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, which gave the department a failing grade when it comes to transparency.

“There are any number of situations in which the NYPD has engaged in what I have come to categorize as the Nancy Reagan response — ‘Just say no,’” said Bob Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government.

Information-seekers whose records requests are denied can file an appeal with the public agency in question. They can seek an advisory opinion with the Committee on Open Government, which has a watchdog role but no enforcement powers. But the only step after that remains an expensive and time-consuming lawsuit.

In 2006, state lawmakers tweaked New York FOI laws and made it easier for petitioners to recoup attorney fees if they prove public agencies either unreasonably withheld public records or failed to respond to requests within the statutory deadlines. In the NYPD’s case, this hasn’t served as much of a deterrent.

Some other states offer stronger tools to pressure recalcitrant public agencies. A few have granted attorneys general enforcement powers, and a small handful, including Connecticut, have a formal commission that tries to resolve complaints before they reach a courtroom. Some states, such as Arkansas,can charge violators with minor misdemeanors, but prosecutions remain infrequent, according to the Kenneth F. Bunting, the executive director of the National Coalition for Freedom of Information at the Missouri School of Journalism.

“The unfortunate truth is that in most state public disclosure laws, there is not an intermediate step between screaming and yelling for the document and suing for the document,” Bunting said.

Most of the recent challenges to the NYPD have come from The New York Times and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director at the NYCLU, said responsibility for a lack of transparency rests squarely with police brass.

“I don’t think the problem is the law,” Dunn said. “The problem is that the NYPD is terrible at honoring both the spirit and letter of the law. What I think we need is an entirely new attitude at the department when it comes to FOIL.”

In 2009, the NYCLU sued to appeal blocked freedom of information requests for reports of police-involved shootings. A judge ruled in their favor two years later and ordered the NYPD to turn over the reports. In 2010, The New York Times sued the NYPD over its failure to disclose three different electronic databases: one on handgun permittee addresses, one on hate crime locations and one showing crime incidents.

A state court ordered the NYPD to release the first two items, but denied the third request because the police department asserted it would have to build new software in order to avoid disclosing private information. Though the judge declined to award attorneys’ fees to the Times, she still still came down hard on the police.

“The NYPD acknowledges that it has routinely failed to comply with FOIL, and it represents that, as of May 2011, it has changed some of its practices so as to bring them into compliance,” New York Supreme Court Justice Jane Soloman wrote in her 2011 ruling.

Freeman said he hasn’t seen evidence since of any changes to freedom of information request procedures at the police department. The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. In response to a request for comment, a New York City Law Department spokeswoman pointed to a February decision in which a state appellate court overturned Soloman’s ruling to release the gun permit and hate crime databases, and sent the case back to the trial court over the criminal incident data.

The appellate court also ruled that the NYPD was not in violation of public records laws because state law doesn’t set explicit time limits for yes-or-no responses to requests for information. New York Times Assistant General Counsel David McCraw said he plans to take the case up to the Court of Appeals, the state’s high court, in the coming weeks.

In many of the more recent cases, documents the NYPD couldn’t find while a freedom of information request is pending suddenly materialize once the issue escalates to a lawsuit against the department. That’s what happened toRemapping Debate, a public policy news website that sought data on parade and sound permits in the 1960s, 1990s and 2000s for an article about how the NYPD handles public demonstrations.

After waiting 11 months for results, the news website and Andrew Celli, an attorney with the firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, filed a lawsuit against the NYPD in State Supreme Court this past April. They reached a settlement in late July. In the time between filing the lawsuit and settling, they received nearly 3,000 pages of previously unobtainable NYPD documents.

“It’s the classic stonewall at City Hall,” Celli said. “I believe the police department counts on some large number of people who make FOIL requests not having the resources or the sophistication to press their demands in court. I think they built that into their system.”

Celli said he and Remapping Debate may file an appeal in order to obtain files, dating back to the 1960s, that haven’t yet materialized.

“We don’t believe they conducted a diligent search,” Celli said.

Not all plaintiffs agree to settle once the NYPD belatedly produces their public records after they file a lawsuit. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, a lawyer and sociology doctoral student at New York University, sued the NYPD in May over public record requests for which she never received a meaningful response — that is, until she sued. She wanted the police department to share precinct-by-precinct historical crime data, so she could study the department’s quality-of-life policing patterns and their effect on neighborhoods.

At first, Kohler-Hausmann didn’t see a problem with the request. The department already postscitywide crime complaint data online, and the NYPD keeps precinct-level arrest data in their CompStat system. All she sought was corresponding data on complaints and summonses for each precinct.

Kohler-Hausmann filed her request last July. Aside from three letters from the NYPD asking to extend the deadline for a yes-or-no answer to her request, she didn’t hear back from the police department officials until she filed her lawsuit.

A few weeks after she sued, police department officials called her into a meeting to discuss a potential settlement with NYPD lawyers and database managers. They offered her the data detailed in her original request, in a slightly different format than what she first requested. But Kohler-Hausmann asked for something else she contended she was entitled to under the law: attorney’s fees, which she estimated added up to $10,000 for several dozens of hours of work.

That’s where the settlement talks broke down, as revealed in e-mails between Kohler-Hausmann and NYPD Lt. Lori Hernandez, a deputy managing attorney.

“I again point out that we have every right to defend the NYPD’s interests and that the data offered was for settlement purposes only,” Hernandez wrote in one e-mail, explaining why the NYPD would not release the data if Kohler-Hausmann insisted on pressing her case.

“I am disappointed to learn that you feel that ‘defend[ing] the NYPD’s interests’ consists in resisting lawful and reasonable Freedom of Information Law requests for data on policing for the purposes of social science research,” Kohler-Hausmann fired back.

Kohler-Hausmann said the NYPD’s lawyers used her project’s deadlines as a way to pressure her into dropping her petition for attorney’s fees. She refused.

“The NYPD is just in a very defensive posture,” Kohler-Hausmann said. “They think everyone out there wants to prove what they do is wrong. It’s our data. We’re the taxpayers of the city. They’re acting like the goddamn Egyptian military here.”

At one point before filing her lawsuit against the NYPD, Kohler-Hausmann said she talked with a woman at the police department’s records access office over the phone and asked her about specific policies on public record requests and response timelines.

“The lady on the phone said I had to FOIL it,” Kohler-Hausmann recalled.

Sunny Shue, died Saturday June 26, 2010. Video that Sunny did on April 9 2010, asking for protection from Judge Joseph Golia. Wednesday...

September 2, 2009 Hearing With Senator John Sampson on Judicial Accountability in New York State

We went to a Hearing with Senator John Sampson on September 24, 2009 on the New York Judicial Syatem. A few people were able to speak, and many others signed up to speak at a later date...that Sampson never scheduled.

First published in print: Monday, January 11, 2010
Here we thought that the first order of business this year for state Senate Democratic leader John Sampson would be to help regain that institution's credibility by passing radical ethics reforms.

The need for them would seem to be brutally obvious, in the wake of the conviction of former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on federal corruption charges and Governor Paterson's calls for requiring state officials members to disclose their outside income. First, though, Mr. Sampson has joined a large Manhattan law firm where one of the founding partners is on the board of the state Trial Lawyers Association.
That's right. Mr. Sampson now works not only for the people of New York, but also for the firm of Belluck & Fox, according to a New York Post report.

His salary in the former position is a matter of public record, of course -- $88,500. His salary in his new job, however, is something Mr. Sampson isn't about to disclose.

Just as New Yorkers need to learn more about legislators' outside interests, Mr. Sampson offers them less.

Imagine, then, what people might think if this is one more year when the Legislature fails to pass ethics laws. Or if it does, only a watered down version of what's need to clean up an institution where criminal indictments and convictions have become too commonplace?

What were Mr. Sampson's priorities, they might wonder -- transparency in government, or shielding from both his own finances and Belluch & Fox's clients?

The same questions might be asked as well of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who holds a position of counsel to another Manhattan law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. Little is known by the public about that arrangement, too, thanks to the alarmingly inadequate financial disclosure requirements for legislators that Mr. Silver seems to think are entirely adequate. We know he works for that particular firm, one of the largest tort law firms in New York, but we don't know what the nature of his work is, or on whose behalf he does it.

That will become all the more relevant in the event someone else in the Legislature tries to push for rewriting the state's medical malpractice laws or otherwise changing tort laws this session. Two of the most powerful people in state government work for law firms closely associated with the leading opponent of such legislation, namely the Trial Lawyers Association.

In Mr. Silver's case, he rather famously said of his legal work a half-dozen years ago, "I don't think it's a conflict. How many times do you want to hear this?"

In Mr. Sampson's case, the word comes from his office that his outside work won't interfere with his official duties.

Not exactly endorsements of ethics reform, are they?

THE ISSUE:

The state Senate Democratic leader has another job, too, not that he wants to talk about it.

THE STAKES:

When ethics reform is a major issue, how serious is he about stronger financial disclosure requirements?

Electronic Libraries and FOIA Links

Accountability is the Key

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Victims-of-Law

Who is a Victim-of-Law?Victims-of-Law are persons who have been subjected to tyrannical or arbitrary rulings or edicts in violation of constitutional and civil rights under the democratic maxim reminiscent of our Republic -- the "Rule of Law"

The victims of unethical and corrupt lawyers, judges and employees of the state and federal judiciary demand accountability from those who abuse the power of office while they remain absolutely immune. The media as well as the legislative and executive branches of government traditionally ignore these abuses. The judicial branch itself hurls insults at the victim claiming they are nothing more than a 'disgruntled litigant' while ignoring substantive allegations.

It is essential to empower the victims of legal abuses. Our strength is in our numbers thus the more people that demand their constitutional and civil rights the quicker they will be attained.

What most people do not comprehend is that judges are immune from civil lawsuits. If a judge unlawfully imprisoned someone or maliciously denied due process in a case that cost a litigant millions of dollars, it doesn't matter. There is no redress for the aggrieved person.

The emotional and physical health problems inherent in these abuses are now coming to light but the judicial branches throughout our country continue to avoid or deliberately ignore what they have helped to create.

This website hopes to publish documented proof of many of the deliberate violations of the 'rule of law, the doctrine upon which our Constitutional Republic is based.

This website hopes to publish documented proof of many of the deliberate violations of the 'rule of law, the doctrine upon which our Constitutional Republic is based.

What is the "Rule of Law"? Equality and the Law

The right to equality before the law, or equal protection of the law as it is often phrased, is fundamental to any just and democratic society. Whether rich or poor, ethnic majority or religious minority, political ally of the state or opponent--all are entitled to equal protection before the law.

The democratic state cannot guarantee that life will treat everyone equally, and it has no responsibility to do so. However, writes constitutional law expert John P. Frank, "Under no circumstances should the state impose additional inequalities; it should be required to deal evenly and equally with all of its people."

No one is above the law, which is, after all, the creation of the people, not something imposed upon them. The citizens of a democracy submit to the law because they recognize that, however indirectly, they are submitting to themselves as makers of the law. When laws are established by the people who then have to obey them, both law and democracy are served.

The Supreme CourtThe Framers considered the rule of law essential to the safekeeping of social order and civil liberties. The rule of law holds that if our relationships with each other and with the state are governed by a set of rules, rather than by a group of individuals, we are less likely to fall victim to authoritarian rule. The rule of law calls for both individuals and the government to submit to the law's supremacy. By precluding both the individual and the state from transcending the supreme law of the land, the Framers constructed another protective layer over individual rights and liberties. --Reprinted from U.S. Dept. of State

Judicial Immunity is AbsoluteIn an unprecedented degree of 'abuse of power' judges decreed themselves absolutely immune from civil suit when they are "acting maliciously and corruptly." In 1996 the 104th Congress passed the Federal Courts Improvement Act amending the Civil Rights statute to give further immunities to malicious and corrupt judges.

Sec. 309. Prohibition against awards of costs, including attorney's fees, and injunctive relief against a judicial officer.28 USC 2412 note.>> for Costs.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no judicial officer shall be held liable for any costs, including attorney's fees, in any action brought against such officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer's jurisdiction.(b) Proceedings in Vindication of Civil Rights.--Section 722(b) of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1988(b)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end thereof "except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity such officer shall not be held liable for any costs, including attorney's fees, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer's jurisdiction".

(c) Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights.--Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1983) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the first sentence: ``, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable''.

Advocate for truth and An End To Judicial Immunity

About Betsy Combier

Reporter, paralegal, advocate,I will investigate, search on the internet and in all data bases for information that will help a person in need of resolution to a problem.I believe in substantive and procedural due process for all individuals, groups and organizations and trademarked the term "e-accountability" to describe the purpose of my work. I am the parent of four daughters.

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Who is John Libecci?

On Sunday, August 16, 2009, a friend of a friend called me at approximately 2:10PM, a Mr. John Libecci. Mr. Libecci is, I understand, a private investigator who knows a friend of mine socially. I asked whether he could help me find out some information involving my federal court case filed in United States District court on June 8, 2009 involving the Surrogate Court and my mother's Will. After I told him about the property being taken by the court, he told me that the court never takes property without a reason; after I told him that the Will was never probated since I filed the Will (of my mom) on March 17, 1998), Mr. Libecci told me that "obviously the Will was not done right", and said that he worked for the Courts and the Judges. He would not tell me what he did for the Court and the judges, then hung up. If anyone has information about Mr. John Libecci please email me at betsy@parentadvocates.org. You may send me any information anonymously.